This year I have grown as a writer. 8 months ago I had many weaknesses and I was not a good writer, but now I have turned some of those weaknesses into strengths and have improved as a writer. At the beginning of 11th grade I had trouble with organization and details. I did not know what order to write my paper, so sometimes it would be hard to understand what I was writing about. I also did not know which details were important on the subject. Over the year I have learned how to organize a paper correctly and to give elaborate details about the subject. Two of my strengths have always been that I can come up with a good hook to start a paper, and I am creative. I can come up with a good hook because I want people to read my papers and they will not want to if they think that it will be boring. I do not read any type of paper unless it has a good hook or lead. I am creative because I spend most of time thinking about a paper and how I can make it different from all of the other papers. I still have trouble with closing an essay. I find it hard to close a paper because I do not know what the last thing that needs to be said should be. I used to hate writing papers because I never used to know what to write about, but now I look forward to some of the essays that we have to write. I had fun writing some of the essays this year.
In my portfolio, my favorite piece is my persuasive research essay. This paper was easy because everyone always has an opinion to a subject the feel strongly about, and they always think about it, so when I was told that we could choose anything for our research paper I already knew what I was going to write about. I gave excellent quotes and facts to support my opinion. I feel that this paper was the one that I worked the hardest on. I had fun researching my topic and reading what other people had to say about the topic too. I have many pieces in my portfolio that I am not proud of. I was not able to write a good Gatsby essay because I did not read the book and I did not elaborate on my American Dream paper. I did not really understand the sol Essay question so I do not feel that this paper was very good either. These papers were poorly planned and written, so I do not like them.
I liked the wiki portfolio better than a paper portfolio. The wiki portfolio made it possible for me to access my papers and work on them anytime and anywhere I wanted to. The wiki portfolio is also neater and better organized, and it is almost impossible to lose your papers. With a paper portfolio, you can always lose your papers and you have to take that with you wherever you go if you want to work on that. If you save you papers to wiki you will always have them. Next year in 12th grade, I will still use wiki because it is very easy and neat.